


The Beast I Made Of Me

by fishpoets



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: ..sort of, Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Bounty Hunter McCree, Dragon!Hanzo, Fairy Tale Elements, Gen, M/M, Strangers to Friends to Lovers
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-09-30
Updated: 2017-09-30
Packaged: 2019-01-07 07:06:43
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,869
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12228018
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fishpoets/pseuds/fishpoets
Summary: Trouble has followed McCree all his life. Hell, it's his job to get right in the thick of it; he hunts down the bounties no one else dares touch. But with the price on his own head at an all-time high and demons from his past on his tail, he was forced to flee – all the way across the Pacific Ocean.It's no surprise when trouble finds him here, too. What is surprising is the form it takes.He's met monsters before, but all of them were men. He's never seen anything like this.





	The Beast I Made Of Me

 

Swift as a shadow, McCree darts down the first alleyway he sees, cursing ill fortune.

 

The angry voices on his tail are gaining on him. He races down the uneven path, praying to whatever god or spirit or benevolent, otherworldy being that may care to listen that the shadows between the buildings to his sides are deep enough to hide in. As soon as the thought crosses his mind, thick clouds draw over the moon and smother it, plunging the world into darkness. Maybe something _is_ still looking out for him. First bit of luck McCree's had all day.

 

Or maybe not, because a second later the tip of his boot catches a dip in the cobbles. He flails out, meaning to catch himself on the wall to his left, but his hands meet nothing but open air and with a swoop in his stomach he goes sprawling, slamming hard into the pave stones with a jarring flash of pain.

 

"Shit," he curses under his breath, pushing himself up on scraped palms. Feet pound into the alleyway behind him. "Shit, fuck, _hell-fuckin'-fire_ , you really done it this time, McCree."

 

He's got no great desire to end up sliced like sashimi, robbed blind and dumped outside the town walls to be eaten by wildlife, but with the way things've been going recently it looks like that's what the fates have found at the end of his thread. Still. He ain't going down without a fight. He's always known that when his time came he'd have to deal with the Reaper face-to-face.

 

Adrenaline is enough to override the pain. He drags himself off the ground and staggers a few paces forwards before he turns, unholsters Peacekeeper and holds her, warm and solid in his dirty hand, a perfect fit.

 

"Alright doll," he murmurs, pressing a kiss to her cylinder, "looks like it's just you n' me. As was always meant t' be."

 

He sets his stance. Thumbs off the safety. Lifts his arm and aims.

 

Stares down the gaping dark.

 

And waits.

 

..And waits. And waits some more. The breeze fingers his hair, brushing it gently out of his face as it whispers past, then falls still. Silent. No sounds of footsteps. No voices.

 

For the first time in years, McCree's steady arm falters. Slowly, he lets his gun fall. He holds his breath and listens.

 

The night presses in from all sides. Can't see a god-damned thing, not even a glint of light on Peacekeeper's smooth barrel. The dark is so heavy and thick it seems almost tangible, like you could reach out and touch it. Or it could reach out and touch you. Close your eyes and focus, and you could feel it breathing, soft and damp on the back of your neck.

 

It'd be enough to make a man cower and gibber from fear of spooks in the night. Not Jesse McCree, though. He's bitten and clawed his whole life from the shadows and they don't frighten him.

 

He breathes in deep. Calm. _Trust your senses. Trust your experience_. Keeping his gun ready, he takes one step forward, then another, reaching out with his left hand. The ground is reassuringly solid under his bootheels, as is the feel of old, worn woodgrain under his questing fingertips. He drags his palm across and the wood rises and dips – some sort of relief? A carving? He takes another careful step forward.

 

The wind whips past again, blowing his hair back in his face. This time it carries the voices he was expecting – and they're very, very near. McCree shrinks close to the wood post and listens.

 

His Japanese is better than it was, but still limited, and the folks of this country village speak in a different accent to those in the bustling town of Edo, less decipherable to his unaccustomed foreign ears. Even so, the sounds of an argument are the same in any language.

 

One of the men – the leader of this little gang, McCree thinks, all bluster and bravado – wants to press onwards. He can't seem to decide whether loud insults or loud threats will get his orders followed best. The rest of them – three, which means either one man's dropped back or ain't talking – now they're much more reluctant. McCree can't tell why, though. None of them seem keen on speaking slowly, or in full sentences.

 

They're searching for him, that much he can tell for sure. After the price on his head, probably – at least, boss-man keeps yapping about money – though how they know about his bounty all the way out here McCree has no idea. Annoying, though. He came here precisely because no one should.

 

They keep mentioning it being the fifth month. _Tango no Sekku,_ McCree hears, and a name, _Shimada_. They say it again and again, in whispers, like they don't want it to be heard.

 

Their leader laughs. He says something about stories and laughs again, a high-pitched sound like the yack of a jackal. “ _You don't believe them, do you?”_

 

His laughter meets silence.

 

He growls, then shouts, something about respect. The sound of someone stumbling after being shoved. “ _You don't_ respect _me. Hey, Yamazaki, tell me you don't agree with these idiots.”_

 

When he finally speaks, the fifth voice is quieter than the others, more serious. _"I don't care what these guys think,"_ he says, slow enough for McCree to understand clearly, _"but I know what the stories say. I like to listen to warnings when they're given to me."_

 

Boss whines. “ _Everyone knows the stories. Doesn't make them true.”_ He picks up speed, starting to rant, and McCree can only pick out parts: _fighting,_ he says, and _power._ _Greed._ A scoff. _Killed each other... rival families... it happens when there's no strong leader._

 

And that name again: Shimada.

 

A moment's pause, then the quiet one says, _"My aunt worked in the house. She knew the sons. Before she died she made me promise I'd never set foot on the estate, and I never have."_ Another beat, heavy with meaning. _"And I never will."_

 

The leader is angry now. His threat is obvious. _“I'll kill you if you don't obey.”_

 

 _"Kill me?”_ Quiet's turn to scoff. “Y _ou can try if you want, Jirou, but nothing you do is going to get me in that house."_ The sound of soles on stone, his voice fainter as he walks away. _"Look for the foreigner by yourself all you wish, but the rest of us are leaving. Come on."_

 

The three reluctant lackeys trail after Quiet. Boss seethes, shouts more insults and stomps his feet, but seems he's just as McCree figured – more bark than bite. Feeling more confident now the odds are evened, McCree peeks out around the post. Boss is standing with his back to him no more than fifteen feet away, holding a torch in one hand and a short blade with a plain scabbard in the other. He curses to himself and stomps his foot again, then scowls up at the tall stone wall, the twist to his thin mouth and thwarted ambition in his eyes just visible in the flickering firelight.

 

He stands there glowering for a minute before he turns and looks in McCree's direction. McCree melts back into the shadows behind the post. Silently, he readies Peacekeeper.

 

But it seems he'll be spilling no blood tonight. Soon enough he hears Boss curse again, followed by the sounds of him stalking off into the night after his buddies. McCree lets out a sigh, tension draining out of him as he slides down the post, sinks to his haunches in the dirt.

 

He bumps his head against the wood behind him and closes his eyes.

 

God help him. What a day he's had.

 

 

* * *

 

 

_Once upon a time, there was a village, high on a hill._

 

_It was a beautiful village, famed in all the lands around for its bounty of flowering trees. It was said that, come spring, every step you took would be on a carpet of soft, pink petals. Truly a sight to behold._

 

_Or it had been, before all the trees fell dead._

 

_(There is one that still lives, the villagers will tell you in hushed, trembling voices, if you ask with enough persuasion. One tree still blossoms in spring. But they refuse to show you. For the tree grows in the gardens of the castle – the empty castle that clings atop the cliff at the edge of the village, and none who set foot there escape unscathed. If they escape at all._

 

_Keep away, they say, if you value your soul. It is cursed.)_

 

 

_The boy in the desert knew nothing about the village or its stories. It was miles and miles away from him, after all, on the other side of the world. All he knew as he strode out into the dusty wild was the weight of the pack on his back and the urge that burned beneath his skin, hotter than any sun shining down:_

 

_To find somewhere he belonged._

 

_The boy grew. He made friends who were bad for him and enemies who were almost as bad as the friends. He grew tall and brown and sly as an old desert dog; grew into gunpowder, into smoke and smoking barrels and the horizon stretching on before him, beckoning him on._

 

_When the gunpowder caught up with him, he followed it out of the desert._

 

_He found a place to belong. People._

_He lost them, too._

_He grew some more._

 

_But little did he know, as he stepped on a ship heading westwards and set off across the vast open seas, what the horizon had lined up for him next._

 

 

* * *

 

 

Light and throbbing pain makes him crack open his eyes.

 

From under his lashes he watches the clouds draw back, revealing the moon, full and round, almost at its apex. As it emerges the light grows, slithering over the ground like something alive; a silverfish or a spectral ray. It peeks over the rooftops, down into the alley and creeps over McCree's sprawled legs, driving back the pervasive dark. The shadows slip away like water from oil, as if afraid.

 

The light crawls up the wooden post. Only it's not a post at all. It's a gate.

 

Half of one, anyway, made of thick, sturdy wood. Beaten and weathered, it looks ancient, evidently treasured for years but now abandoned and left to rot. As the moonlight brightens further McCree can see the other side of the arch, its own half of gate flung wide and still obscured in the shadow of an overhanging tree. When he stumbled in the alley he must have fallen right through the gap.

 

So it was luck, after all.

 

Curious, he shuffles forward a bit, mindful of the sharp spike of pain in his knee, and looks up over his shoulder at the relief he'd felt on the wood.

 

The moonlight slides upwards. It reveals a taloned foot. Scales. Fur. A long, curved, serpentine body.

 

McCree gapes.

 

The dragon on the gate snarls down at him, its twisted form gashed open, rent through with great jagged cuts, like frenzied slashes from four enormous claws.

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading! 
> 
> this was meant to be a small, simple beauty and the beast au, but it's grown into a real beast (ha) of its own. I know where it's going but updates will be sporadic and irregular because a) i'm a slow writer, and b) you know. Life. 
> 
> Hopefully I'll get the next part out within a month but... well. don't hold your breath is all i'm saying :P


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